24 November, 2009

Quilt Along Week 4 - Carving out Your Niche

Another video! My apologies for the bad lighting and my apparently rosy cheeks. (A total aside - I love when The Monster says 'apparently', it is a totally overused word in our house.) It's week 4 of the Quilt Along. How are you doing?

Start with your strips sets, well pressed and 1.5-2 inches wider than the desired finished size of your blocks. You can see below what I mean. I am aiming for a 9.5 inch unfinished block.

Take your ruler and start rotating it. Aim for an angle like below - just a little bit off center. One important thing to keep in mind is that you want to avoid teeny strips on the side. Ensure that you have at least .5 inch strip from the last seam to the edge of the cut. Conveniently, the ruler is your cutting guide so you can watch this.

Cut the right side and the top. If you are left-handed it might be more comfortable to cut the left and top first.Flip around your fabric strip. Generally I do this by rotating my entire cutting mat instead of lifting the fabric. Line up the bottom left corner (bottom right if you're left handed) with the 9.5 inch by 9.5 inch (or your desired size) marking on your ruler. This will create cutting lines on the edge of the ruler for your side and top to finish of the block. Cut.

And there you have a finished block. It can be used in any direction when it comes to laying out your blocks.

Now you need to cut out the rest of the blocks from the single strip set. How many you get will depend on your desired block size. You should get 6 if you want 6.5 inch blocks, 4 at 9.5, and 3 at 12.5. The process is the same as above, but you start above your last cut as opposed to the top of the strip set. You can fiddle with the rotation of the ruler here and there. All your blocks can be cut in the same direction or you can rotate the ruler in the opposite direction. I tend to do two in one direction, and two in the opposite.

The next two photos are examples of one strip set cut. One for the original Gratitude quilt and one for the current one.

Notice the varying angles. This will give you even more opportunities for dramatic movement in the final top.

Next week will layout our quilt top and get it together. Remember, try not to play with your blocks too much once you've cut them. The seams are not finished and you don't want anything the loosen. See you next week!

Have I said thanks for this quilt along already? If so, sorry to be redundant, if not, thanks so much! Having returned from vacation, I have worked past my fabric phobia and am so excited to get started!

hi cheryl, its wonderful to watch you in quasi-person and putting more humanity to an online friend. however, must -- resist -- quilting -- allure! i love quilts but the last one i made took me 2 years and i'm not sure it's even big enough for a lap! anyway, thank you for your support on my own blog. i'm so happy you continue to visit :)